Body as a Site of Resistance in Hitomi Kanehara’s Snakes and Earrings

            The paper entitled “Body as a Site of Resistance in Hitomi Kanehara’s Snakes and Earrings” is an attempt to deconstruct the traditional notions about body. A close study of Hitomi Kanehara’s Snakes and Earrings reveals to us that body is now being used as a site of resistance in contemporary Japan. The theories of Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir , Michel Foucault and many such post structuralists deconstruct traditional notions associated with femininity and masculinity. An examination of the novel in the light of such theories questions the various conventions associated with body such as “pure bodies”, "impure bodies” and so on. The author attempts to highlight and channelize the post structural unwillingness of a group of young minds in Japan to surrender to the idea of a mainstream bourgeois culture which dictates laws to its people. The characters in the novel resort to many body modification practices like tattooing and piercing, self-mutilation, alcoholism, free sex which are obviously practices done on body. Such practices try to bring about a radical change by exploring the power of body. The various norms of society are thus subverted by treating the body as a site of performance. The body becomes a site for all social changes and is the focus for all measures against the mainstream culture.

Index Terms: Body, Deconstruct, resistance, culture